Episode 589: He's the Heel

0:00All right, well, CoTace not here this week so we can talk sports. And to do that, I brought in another American and another American football fan. We got Aaron Delp. Everyone knows Aaron. He's one of the hosts over at the Enterprise AI show, formerly the cloudcast. He's also an expert AI, at least I'm going to call that, works over at Mistrah. So he has all the knowledge. Aaron, welcome officially to software to find talk. Although I feel like you're already part of the family, this is your official welcome. Well, no, and we were talking about foreign. This completes the matrix like all of the cross connections between all of the shows. Everyone's been everywhere as of today. We checked it. Perfect. We finally done it. So everybody, if you're not already listened to it, go listen to the Enterprise AI show. I'm off on there as well. So even even more reason here me, here Aaron and here Brian. Now my question for both of you, because today is an important day in the United States. It is the kickoff of American football season, which of course, you know, most of those listeners don't care about, but it combines something that I think we like to talk about in software to find talk a lot, travel.

1:00So for those that do not fall American football, the Rams, based on Los Angeles, are playing the 49ers based on San Francisco. They have now flown all the way to somewhere in Sydney. I believe no, Melbourne. No, Melbourne. Get it straight. I gave you say, how is the official pronunciation of Melbourne? It's like Melbourne. I know. You just drop the trailing arm. Just no arm. Okay. So they're officially flown all the way over. They're going to play the American football game there. Now this presents in an interesting travel dilemma. Okay. So there's two choices were made. The San Francisco 49ers, I would say they did the conventional thing. They flew out a week before and there, if you will, acclimating to play the game, which will be very confusing for all of us. It'll be Thursday morning, but most of the world will watch it Wednesday night. So that's that what they're doing. And then the Rams, I don't even think they officially released their itinerary, but they are basically going to fly in the day before. I don't even know if it's in the sun. It's complicated because it's a tonight game. Yeah.

2:00It gets even complicated because like, is it the day before and the international day line? So they're coming in as close to this kickoff as humanly possible and then they're going to leave immediately afterwards. So both of you fly internationally quite a bit. And I think both of you probably have thoughts on how do you get over, you know, the time zone change. So Matt, I'll start with you because you're your veteran of this specific trip, right? Of doing this. Now if you were the football coach and your goal was to win the football game, which team based solely on travel arrangements, do you think has the better approach? Well, you got to take the step back and look at the season approach. I mean, the 40 managers have taken a week to acclimate and then that's going to mean they're going to take a week to kind of reactimate to back in the US. They don't have a buy week to do they? Right. Well, they have 10 days because they basically have a penny back. They have a mini buy. It's not terrible. But you know, the, the, the rams are fine, you know, first class or better, you know,

3:04whatever, whatever it is on their, their chartered flight. I kind of like their approach, you know, get in. Hopefully you sleep on the plane. You're well rested. You're professional. They're accommodating you to make sure that you have every opportunity to show up and just act like nothing has changed. You know, just don't look at the sky. Suns in the wrong place. It's up. Just, just get out there and play. I like it. Aaron, now both of you, I am not, but both of you, I think are runners. So, so maybe Aaron, I'll put it to you this way. Give you the same kind of question. But say you, let's just say you're running a 4K something 5K something maybe it's kind of simple, right? But your goal was to, if you will, do a personal record, your PR, right? And you needed, but your life dependent on this. Do you go, do you go with the acclamation? You go the 7 days out and get there or do you just fly in, sleep on the plane, you know, and just go right out and you just like run it and be like, like, hey, my body's ready. I'm going to do it. Well, so I don't think the answer is quite the same because what you did is you just put

4:07life and death stakes on it. It's the first game of the season. So, so you have to, I think a better comparison there is like if you're running a 5K and it literally doesn't matter because you're going to run 20 or 30 more 5Ks that season, do you need to PR the first one? The answer is no. So I think you fly in, you do the game and you get the hell out. You get in, you get in before the jet lag hits you to your back because in the end of the day, it's not the damn Super Bowl. Now, if it's the Super Bowl, yeah, you probably do. They fly like two weeks early and you spend all time there. So I feel like spending a week there for that first game of the season feels a little bit like a vacation for us. Yeah, look what, have lots of fun to have a little vacation. Well, I don't mind you, what's the, because you've, I mean, you live there. Have you ever, what's the shortest you've done a turnaround between the US and Australia? Have you ever done it unless then, I guess for them, this would be a lot of fun.

5:07Maybe like 72 hours. Yeah, I think I did a, I did like a two, three nights trip to the US once. And yeah, it was just you, I was a mess the whole time and then I came back. Why do like, I was just thinking, you know, I'm an Australian, so that's maybe some unique things. But like, you're up when you fly to Europe, I would prefer to just get to Europe, take a nap, get up and do this and then just get up and do the thing I have to do. And then leave, right? Like, because I think it's sort of like, when you get that third, that second or third day is actually, I think the hardest, right? Because your body's messed up. Now, I don't know, you know, like I said, with Australia, the different days, it's a whole another thing. So well, tune in tonight. Well, I guess we'll already know next week we'll review what happened. We'll know what's seen on one loss. And I think the teams are pretty evenly matched. So with the sample size of one, we can just say, like, well, the winner, clearly the winner chose the better sleep strategy. That'll be the determining factor. All right.

6:07Now, I gave everyone some homework last week. Some of you did it, some of you did it, but that's okay. I wanted everyone to watch the story of VS Code, full on documentary of the rise of VS Code. Now, I'll give us a quick overview, but I'm going to summarize. My quick take is like, I'm giving this 3.5 stars out of five. Thought it was good. I learned some good stuff. Here's the key things I learned that I guess Eric Gamma was the co-author of Design Patterns, which is like a seminal book, which I had read. I did not know he was involved in the VS Code at all, to completely new to me. I did not put that together. So I was the first thing that I learned. I thought it was funny that he was at IBM working on a clips, and then they were like, come over here and did that. Didn't really know that part of it as well. And then also I learned that pretty much this entire thing was built in Zurich. In Zurich, like all these documentaries do, it's always funny because there's always to work from home and everyone needs to be back in the office. But whenever they do the documentaries, they have the most beautiful home offices and they live in the most beautiful areas. There's a lot of B-roll of Zurich and vineyards and stuff like that.

7:09So that was fun to look at. And then generally overall, I liked some of the history and stuff. Thought it was a little bit long. And also I felt like they didn't really interview. And I'll get into this a little bit more. Some of like other people that I thought would have been really funding food and documentary. So it was very, if you will, Microsoft Centric, which I'm truly paid for. So it's their kind of piece there. And then of course we'll talk about a little bit about the evolution of VS Code. Aaron, I know you had a look at it. What was your initial take of the documentary? So a little bit like you, very one-sided. But I just kind of figured it out, funded by Microsoft. But here's the, I mean, the larger take on this. I actually really dig these like television, broadcast, quality documentaries that get put up on YouTube now. And I actually have a YouTube subscription. So I don't have to do ads and I can do downloads and all the kinds of stuff like that. I want to say my watch later list right now is like 100 videos deep.

8:12So obviously I have issues. But I love these kinds of things. I will, I watched about half of it. I will watch the other half of it probably when I'm only playing next week. Completely dig them. But the biggest thing for me was I was like, oh yeah, what happened to a clips? And that's what happened to a clip. So it kind of answered that question for me pretty, pretty quickly. I was like, oh yeah, okay. I remember a clip. And everybody was like, they show them basically, they say they interview Eric and they're trying to get in the go over and they, they sound like they did a pretty good job for criticism. And they show them like what pictures will like build gates, it's several other people like you need to come over here and do it. But I thought the initial goal, I kind of even forgot about this. Our goal was to basically build a web based editor, IDE, which like I didn't really think of that as, because I think that was back for like everyone was trying to do it. And I didn't even think that was like that great a goal. I don't know Matt, like do you even remember this coming up when everyone first got started?

9:13Yeah. Because I was known as a Morocco. Yeah, Monaco. It was Monaco was the first thing that got greeted. Yeah, and that's to be confused with the font. Yeah, I mean, there, there was or, you know, maybe there still is that, that idea that you would have developer, IDEs on the web and their sandboxes would be fully configured. And, you know, just like, you know, just like Citrix has always been the dream for everyone. Yeah, we, we still, there's, you know, it's still not there. I mean, it, the technology's there. It's just, it's never been widely adopted. And you know what? I'm sure, you know, we've all seen a lot of enterprises and everybody has a slightly different version of it. You know, how, how they try to keep developers on the same path. You know, like, oh, we'll all use the same IDE. And you know, here, here are the configuration centrally controlled or in this case, a web based IDE. And, you know, it, it's, it's never been like something that's going to just break through

10:19and one, one tool takes everything. But VS code has kind of come closest to taking everything, but not in that aspect. Yeah. And so this is what I thought was kind of like, there's almost like little arcs in the documentary. So the first arc is like monoco and they're basically off in the wilderness. No one's using it. And they, they talk about like they, they put it, they embed it in like Microsoft Azure Web something, right? It was some product none of us have like, and they're like, well, no one's really using it. And then what they kind of like, I don't know if they could figure it out, but they basically hook up with the type script team, right? And someone's building type script. And I guess I was part of the thing too. And they're like, we've got this editor and he's like, why don't I just take that editor from you and you keep working on type script? So that was kind of interesting. But then I guess what they kind of figured out was like, well, why don't we like build, you know, essentially an application, right? And this is a part that, you know, they portrayed as like a good thing. And I think it's been very successful. But like, well, I guess it's what is your opinion of electron? Because that's what they basically say. They like, we figured out that we could use electron to basically build, you know, to

11:22take the web app and basically make it a desktop app. So, and they got in the documentary, it's like, this is perfect. And I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, I'll give my opinion in a minute. What do you think, Aaron? Was that like a good thing? Were you like, is that an exciting thing? I don't think it was an exciting thing. And they certainly played it up and acted like it was the best thing that ever happened. I feel like it was just the natural evolution of what it had to do. Like it's just, yeah. They had no other choice. But they made it like, oh, this was amazing. And it was our plan all along. And it's like, eh, like you just, no one downloaded your stuff so you did something else. Well, I felt like, I don't know, this is going to be a thought of you because the big thing they show is like they move its electron. And then they show at like one of the build conferences it running on Linux, Ubuntu specifically. And there's like, you know, huge applause. And so I get it. I understand what it is. But it's like, well, I guess Microsoft only had so many choices. It's not like they were going to go build a native Unix or Linux app or a native Mac app.

12:24So I know you, I remember back, I have to go listen to it again, no interview to Manda because she's in the documentary. She's like the VP of, I don't develop in tools or something like that. It's like, but you specifically, of course, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, of course, as I'm thinking of Matt, I was like, what would not be saying about Emax? That's when I was watching this. That's what I was thinking. But like, I'm going to say, I did not bring it up with her. I know. But like, I want to know what is your opinion with someone's like, oh, we moved to electron. Are you like, that's good? Or is that just, is it just like, well, you had no other choice, right? I mean, yeah, I think electron is a better solution than a web interface. But you know, because it's just taking your web thing and ensuring that you lose the vagaries of different browsers and any other potentially distractions like plugins and the like, I mean, I think as a whole, I, you know, this is going to be a controversial take. I kind of like electron apps because of the cross platform. Yeah, even though they're not, they're not like, performant, you know, they're not

13:27great performance, but they're good enough. Okay. So it's like the slack app, the slack app is good enough. And whenever I look, think of electron, I look at the slack app and I think to myself, great, you better slack. We could do better. Well, and then this is, I guess my thing going forward is like, I get why they did this and the history is interesting enough. But now I kind of feel with AI. It's like, kind of no excuses. Like, why can't we have a need of solution on all of them? Just let, you know, and now to be fair, though, cloud code, which of course everyone knows I love also to my knowledge is an electron app. So it's just like, I don't know. There's something about it. So that part was interesting. Now the next thing, that's the stuff that caught my attention. I thought was really interesting. One, I didn't know the language server protocol, the LSP, right? I had no idea that this came from basically, if you will, from VS code. They're just like, hey, we want more people to support our languages. We want all the code completion and all the things there. And so they again, probably had to do it, but it's been, I think an industry success, right? It's sort of like everyone can just build one LSP and all the IDs can use it.

14:29And so I thought that was actually a pretty good thing. So I don't, did you already know that, Matt? Did you know that this came from the VS code project? Is that sort of funny? Yeah. Yeah. I vaguely knew that because at one point I got Emacs wired up to use it. And, yeah, I don't do enough development anymore to maintain it. So it eventually stopped working. But at one point, I knew that. You had it working at one point. I didn't know that. So I thought that was a good thing. I was like, because they made it open source and that was, they got it done. And then the other thing, I don't know, Aaron, if you saw this, it's like, I thought this was an interesting wrap around in the documentary. It's like the other thing that they did is they basically gave the ones that came up with or popularized development containers. So this whole, and they go through the idea of like, oh, remote development is a good idea, which almost like circles back to where they started, right? And but there's really interesting because they had Facebook come in and say, we want to use this, but all Facebook development is done remotely. I guess everyone uses like a dev computer. So I don't know. Did you, did you already know about that? Did you know about development containers? And it came from this world.

15:30I didn't know it came from this world, but, but it's actually funny that that mentioned Citrix earlier. Like that gave me, so I worked at Citrix for a couple of years and that gave me nightmares and flashbacks and all the things all at once. Sorry. No, no, I'll get like, but it was funny though, because I was, I was like, oh, yeah. That's, yeah, that's one way to go do this. I know by the way, still waiting for that to take over and it, you know, it just hasn't. But yeah, I thought it was a super circular moment, but I had a different set of flashbacks based off of my past than maybe that did. Well, I was going to say to like, I would, do you think that's universally, I mean, I sort of round a lot of like enterprise large companies like our most people doing, like our developers basically now lock down and use like, use a development, you know, virtual machine in the cloud and then connect to it using your favorite, you know, VS code or something like that. Those lines that we're seeing that you work with customers.

16:31What are people doing in the quote, real world? I mean, I, I, you know, I'm not on developers laptops, but I'd say it feels like it's about 75% 80% of the shops have something locked down where they're like, you know, hey, you just connect in, you do your work, you clock out, it's disconnected. You know, there's definitely still some hand managed, you know, I'd ease, bring your own, you know, configure it the way you like as long as, you know, you can work well with everyone else. But there's definitely, you know, the mandate at a lot of the larger shops, like this is, everyone will use the same, same play pin. I was going to say, because back to the like the, the whole, you know, opinionated kind of thing and I think at the end of the day, at least in the, in the developer space, the folks I've seen and I've talked to you, yeah, I mean, that opinionated setup has won the majority for it. It makes sense, too. And it's, it's what the security people want, right? And it's like, you know, obviously intellectual properties, you know, if you're easier to,

17:32to track and stuff like that. Now, the place where I thought there could have been some controversy and now which they had done was like, they went over the many forks of VS code. And there are a lot of them. But the obvious ones to me as I was watching this, right, was cursor. That's what I kept thinking myself, you know, cursor. And then to less extent, wind surf and then Google has their new product. Oh, I think it's Astra camera. It's hot. Anyway, but I'm going to put Google to the side because they're just kind of using it as a, you know, another thing in their universe. But it was real funny because they interviewed one of the, I guess, the core leaders about like the forks and he's like, well, he was so different. He was sort of like, well, I can say it's really great that the forks are really popular. And that's great that they're being successful. But they don't have to worry about like all the problems. They don't have to worry about making it work for everyone. Well, like the part I wanted to ask him is like, there has to be some tremendous bitterness that like cursor was acquired for $60 billion. Wind surf, I think was acquired for like two to three billion dollars camera, exactly what. And so I kind of think this team over in, in the, in the Swiss Alps or whatever they are,

18:35right, are like, wow, that was a lot of money that like, maybe we could have been a part of. And then, and there's just no mention. I mean, there's like a brief mention that they exist, but there's no mention of those outcomes. So, so I don't errand you, do you think they should, there should be some bitterness that, essentially, they, they took this code and they made, I don't know, eight million times more percent money than I'm sure this team made. If there was ever justification for rug pull, that would be the bitterness rug pull right there, which, yeah, I mean, it's so interesting to me to see how that kind of turned out in the end. And yeah, like, I mean, I don't know, because again, if I'm in Zurich and I've already done my thing, like, maybe I'm happy and, and I'm just not bitter. I don't know though. I, it's a lot of Americans. The American side of me says I'm pretty better.

19:38So I don't know. What do you think that? The key there is the American side of me is pretty better. Yeah. Yeah, I think when, when you, you know, when you build up an open source project, you like to think that, you know, it's going to go well and you're going to be, you know, you're going to, you're going to grow this giant pie and you're going to get a reasonable slice. And reasonable is in the eye of the boulder. So. Yeah. Yes. True. Very true. All right. Now, so the show kind of ends and at the end, there's sort of like, I feel like there was sort of like, well, we got to put AI in there. And they just basically say, everything's changing and they talk about co-pilot and all the changes there, which, you know, who knows, just too much to go on. But my thought was the end of this is sort of like, is this a capstone? It's sort of like, I think it's unintentionally a capstone on like, this is the way code used to be written. And they talked a lot about like why editors are so important to developers and anyone's developer probably knows that. But like getting in the flow state, you know, having it be like somebody talked about it, like it's like your home.

20:40It's like your nest, right? That's why developers care so much about their IDEs. But I thought to myself at the end is like, yeah, this is just going to be something people watch, like 10 years from now, but like, oh, people actually typed in and like wrote code. Like we look at somebody that used to do punch cards. So I don't know. What do you think is this sort of the end of actually typing code into an editor mat? Yeah, I actually, you know, I was kind of thinking through that as I was, you know, looking to the documentary. I posted into social media. It's like, remember how excited we used to get when you could rename a variable across multiple files and the ID just magically did it, right? Or, you know, the, the, how you're like, oh, I'm not sure I can trust a clips to refactor this job of class. You know, it's like, and things would magically move around in today. It's like, you know, I check in 30 minutes later and everything's done. And I don't even look at the code. Yeah, peace out. Yeah, well, that's what I thought. I mean, I don't know Aaron. I don't know what you're doing, but we've talked about it. I mean, I think I'm just fine. It's like, I don't, it is at a point. Like I was, I don't know another. Of course, always building the lap in this one.

21:42It's a little Mac app. But I don't even have an Xcode project for it. Like I can just, you know, the, I can do everything. So I don't even like never even logged into the, or never even opened the ID for this project. And I'm like, yeah, and this is exactly how the future is. What do you think? Like, maybe. And the reason why I say that is I can absolutely see a scenario in which, yes, absolutely most of the code is AI generated in some way, shape, or form. But the other problem I see is I feel like unless there isn't the whole trust been verified thing going on of somebody's verifying the code, kind of related, but kind of not related. I was doing a podcast with somebody. We're talking a whole bunch about agents. And he's talking about, oh, yeah, I have this agent. And it kind of does this thing through, you know, it does like Gmail authentication, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, it does it really, really good, like 10 times. And that's 11th time. It just decides, Gmail authentication isn't that awesome. And you rewrite its own authenticator. And, and just waste all the tokens.

22:44And it's like, how do you know, like at the end, they it works. But it took like 10 times as many tokens. Like, how do you know unless somebody actually does, like, the way in which it's achieving success? Yeah. So. So. And, and back to the like the reason I started using VS code was for the code readability. Like you could be able to jump through code quickly and see where it's called and how it's interacted. So I didn't actually find myself a more faster like type or developer. If I knew what I was doing, but if I was reading through code, I found the ID really helpful because it provided more context. And to me, that's that's the value of keeping it in the loop is like, you might not be reviewing every pull request. But reviewing it in the context of an ID is usually better than even, you know, the GitHub's or whoever's, you know, what web UI.

23:46So Matt, I'm going to, man, I'm going to age myself. I can't believe I'm going to embarrass myself like this. I remember when, so my degrees in computer science, I don't code for a living to be clear. My, when, when I did my degree, it was, you know, C and a little C++ on Solaris systems with GCC and NVI was my environment. And so when I got an IDE that color coded, I was like, this is amazing. More or less, all of your features and enhancements that have happened since then. I'm like, man, this is, this will save me so much time. Things just being color coded. So I think that's the funniest place to leave it is like, you know, because this whole team has been doing this for like, I don't know, a while. We'll say 15, 20 years and it's sort of, but in some ways, I felt good because it's sort of like, they're almost, they're almost handing it off. And it's like what Matt said, it's like, it's not so much that these things will go away.

24:49It's just there'd be more like code browsers. And people, like, I don't think people going forward will have the same nest feeling. It's just like, oh, if anything, it's more like being on the, in the cloud code is giving you the flow state. And you just occasionally open up the browser or the editor to be like, let me just double-check this. Or let me edit some file that the cloud code told me I have to edit for some reason. So, so I don't know. So I thought it was fun, you know, like all these documentaries, they're fun to watch. I thought this one was a little bit long. Maybe not as good. What's the last one we watched Matt? The Java one, of course, I like the Java one a lot. Yeah, we've got a lot of them. There's been several others. I think there was a node one. So anyway, you know, go go find Aaron's watch list. And he can like, you know, there's like, you know, 50 of these to watch. So they're all fun. So, uh, congratulations to the people at Microsoft, you know, while it wasn't perfect, I thought it was a good watch. Let me say, let me say it that way. Now, of course, we can't go weak without talking about AI. And we really can't go weak talking about Ed Zitron. And he is, of course, the number one hater of all AI. But my question now isn't so much about what he's writing. As it is about, he has now achieved a level of fame for the hater.

25:52It's like, almost like I was thinking of calling him with like, the Stephen A Smith, I guess that's an ESPN sports reference or like, a wrestling heel. Like he's so popular by playing the heel. Like, that's really become his job. Like, you could never get away from it. And I thought that was signified by he had a full write up in Vanity Fair. So this is not like a tech new, I mean, like Vanity Fair is like a whole mother level of normal people watching this. So my question is few Aaron is like, when you have the number one heel of AI, achieving this level of fame, is it almost by definition? It can't, he can't be a contraining anymore. Like, it's like, like everyone knows about him and everyone knows that he's saying it's going to not go well. So therefore, like, his, almost like this whole position is like not contraining anymore. Well, I'm going to actually say this. What I learned in reading about this, he actually owned or owned or worked at a PR agency.

26:53And so like, he knows how to be a heel. You know what I mean? Like, he knows how to, he, and so I was a little bit, I'm like, at first, I was like, you know, why him? Because there's lots of AI haters out there. But like why him in particular. And then I went, I read that, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Talk about the polish. Yeah, he's got the, he's got the heel skills down that a lot of other folks don't. And so for me, you know what, there's always going to be one. Like, we always, I mean, like the why him, well, I mean, there's a vacuum there. There wasn't anybody else. There's always going to be a face of every major movement. And then, you know, against that movement. I mean, he's, he's embraced it. And he's cashed in. Good for him. I literally don't know what else to say. But like, good for him. Like, well, it's also interesting because there was another article that someone published as well

27:53where they went through pretty, you know, rigorously and like looked at all of his predictions. And for the most part, I'll just save you some time of the video articles. Basically, they were all wrong. Like, he predicted this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. And, you know, and to be fair, like, I don't really think anyone's predicted anything, you know, unless it was by accident. But it's just, I just think it's interesting because I always feel like it's almost like order of operations. It's like, we have a new trend. Somebody like, you know, it's a Michael Burry thing from the big short. It's like, this other person is like trying to raise the flag, but no one's listening. And then they go on to do successful. And then in retrospect, we're like, see somebody did know and they tried to warn us. And we didn't listen. Whereas this, I feel like everyone's like, he's in vanity fair. He's on CMBC. He's like the number one quoted person about this. So it's like, like, none of us should be like, no one's going to be able to say no one warned us. Like, it was definitely here. So that's the part, Matt, that I think it's, it's, and of course, too. Like, I also think to myself, it's like, could he even change his mind if he wanted to?

28:56Like, because at this point, he's embraced like, I think we're seeing it slowly happen though. Yeah. Oh, you think so? Like, how do I do? I do. I mean, first off, he's already won because he's got you pronouncing his name right. Right? Well played, Matt Gray. Well played. Yes. It took maybe a dozen episodes, but it's no longer Sephiron. But first off, he kind of had two main thesis. One AI is, is not, is just a bunch of junk. And it's not good for anything. And two, the finances are just going to bankrupt everybody. And you know, because it's built on, it's built on junk. And nobody's going to be willing to prop up that into the financial market. And if you've been watching him and other AI haters, a lot of them have started to kind of soft pedal. How much junk it is because they're clearly real world use cases, especially in development.

29:58Where things are productively happening. You know, there are productivity gains. And a lot of it is centered over here in tech, where, you know, it's not well distributed. You know, the, but the financial part is like, it just keeps getting worse. And, and then you, you overlay like the crazy financing of how these data centers are getting paid for with, you know, paying yourself to buy yourself mortgage GPUs. And, you know, it's, that's just crazy. And then you layer on the top of, oh, by the way, maybe it's going to kill everybody at or, you know, send employment, you know, through, you know, get everybody unemployed. And everybody hates it. And it's stealing all our water. It's easy to be the heel. You know, just, there are some positive aspects. But you got all these negative ones that you can kind of shift everyone's focus to. Like, well, I said it was never going to work. It kind of works. Just talk about how there's this gaping pit of despair when it comes to the finance side.

30:59I think that's right. I think that's where you're going to have to go to. If we were counseling and be like, it's almost like we're writing the plot for wrestling. It's like, listen, you need to move and just say valuations don't support the, the ultimate, you know, investment. Because that part, I think, is like, I get it. Like, I mean, these numbers are huge. It's hard to get that. But I think this whole thing about, like, you know, and this is some of the predictions is like, it won't do anything. It's not useful. Like, that's, you got to like, you got to act like you never said that. Like Steve May Smith, you just act like you never said that. You're like, I never said that. I didn't like, I just ignore it. And you just want to know. But Matt, now you were interested in other thing. On the other end of the spectrum, I do not, I've not heard of this person. But I think they're, you know, very famous in the AI world. I think it's, I'm probably going to miss the name Jacob Cox on. Anyway, he was, he was someone an anthropic that was, you know, working on safety among other things and, you know, very well established. So he came out, I would say guns blazing and said he's leaving anthropic and essentially believes that we're doomed, you know, that it's in 10 years. Anthropic will essentially, there's, I think, even someone else, not him, but I'll

32:02someone else, I think from also from anthropic said there's a 10% chance in the next decade that AI wipes out humanity. So I was like, oh, this is a pleasant thought to just be scrolling away and seeing on Twitter. And so I don't know. I don't know what to make of these like proclamations either, Aaron. You're, you're obviously, and you're in this world all the time. Like, like, and you deal probably with more scientists like type people than any of us. Like, like, how do you process these things when people say this? Like, I know what to do with it. Yeah. Well, okay. Many different angles to this. But I, before, because I don't know him, but I will say this, just data scientists in general. It's interesting to me because, you know, as you can tell, I've been in the, the, a lot of tech circles for a long time now. But this is my first time dealing with data scientists, you know, as a, as a pool of, of people. I've never worked with teams that are so into like the research angle of all of this. And being known for research and being known for like, it's a little bit more of like,

33:06you know, we kind of grew up in the like vendor sales and enterprise and, you know, what are the customers think in this and this and this. But for, there's a lot of data scientists out there that don't care if they ever sell a single thing to anyone. And all they care about is, I mean, they're in it for a great, a great experience in the, in the academics behind it, right? And it's interesting to me that what's going on is you have a bunch of data scientists who very well known in Silicon Valley. And to go back to the sports analogy, they might as well all be professional athletes. And then they just kind of throw up their hands and they make a big proclamation and then they go disappear for a little while. And I'm not saying this is what he's doing, but I'm saying we've seen this many times now. Somebody does something, goes viral, goes away for a little while and then pops back up somewhere else. Like, is, is he going to leave the industry? Don't know. Right. But longer term, what's going on with all of this?

34:09Yeah, I worry at times that those two companies in particular in building their models and the resources that they have, I know it's shocking that, you know, it's the first time Silicon Valley has ever done anything irresponsible with the bunch of VC money. But like, it's the nature of Silicon Valley companies. Like, I don't think anyone actually finds this surprising. Like, at the end of the day, I just feel like this is Silicon Valley, being Silicon Valley. Yeah. So do you think it's just one of the things that's kind of echo chamber, like everyone live in Silicon Valley, they're so ingrained to talk about AI and living AI that they just can project it to be, you know, this catastrophe. Because it's like, if it, I mean, it's funny things, I mean, I guess if you really, I mean, if you run the odds here, 10% chance that humanity ends in 10 years, you're like, I mean, this would be, I don't even know how to like quantify that. How do you show up for work? That's like catastrophic. Like, yeah, it's like, what do you, like, I mean, I don't know what the leads you to

35:12nihilism. I don't know where, I don't know where you go over that, right? But, and it's also, but it's funny things to do. It's like, you know, and this is the thing that I, it's hard, right? Because they're always seeing a couple models ahead, like wherever we're seeing now, they're seeing, you know, like something that's more impressive. But, you know, as I've jumped around this podcast a million times, it's like, you know, I see eyes and tremendously useful. And there was a whole article this week about like, it solved like another math problem. One of like the millennial math problems and it was like, and there's some controversy. But I like, so it's really good at some of that. And then I'm also like, well, I still can't do my taxes, right? Still can't, it still can't do any type of like long process kind of thing and just like, take it over, right? It's very hard for it to kind of do that stuff. I'm still signing paper forms, right? For my son's permission slips, right? There's a lot of like boring stuff we see. So, so when I read this, I don't, it doesn't resonate with me like, oh, this is going to take over the world and it's going to mobilize everything against humanity and, you know, someone's going to tell the paper clip story for the million time. I'm just like, I don't see this happening. In fact, I see it getting confused.

36:13Sometimes when I'm just in cloud code, it's not that I'm impressive, but it gets confused easily. So, so I don't know, Matt, you seem to always have a good take here. Well, like, what are you doing? Are you building a shelter and down there in Sydney, you have like a big prepping set up where you're going to ride out the end of humanity with AI? Well, I do take some comfort that, you know, when they talk about the dystopian future, it always takes place in Australia. It's the only place with the future. I was going to say, please, please tell me that like you're building a Mad Max car and, you know, you're setting up for the end of the world. You mean that day? You're going to be in the middle of Australia, right in the middle of a continent where that desert is, where there's like nothing. You're just, just not right. Yeah, no, that's, I mean, it's a documentary. But, but, I mean, unless the guy is totally leaning in on the judgment day scenario, I think the end of humanity may be overstating it a bit.

37:16But I do think we are, you know, there's just so much happening so fast that nobody wants to stop and say, like, you know, are we doing the right thing? Because if you're the one who says, oh, let's stop and look around, you're like, but, but opening eyes, not stopping, you know, but, but SpaceX is a stopping, but, you know, the Chinese are stopping. What do we do? And so everyone's just like, well, we got to drive as fast as we can into this wall and see if we get through it. I do think, though, in the end, maybe this is just where I come down is like, it's like, if you're just observed him history and human beings, it's like, it doesn't really matter what you say. Like someone's figured out that we can invent this, someone's going to build this and we're just going to see what happens. Like that's a very, I don't know, there's no stopping it, whether it's built by Anthropic or built by somebody else, like it's going to happen. So, you know, but I do think Aaron, you said that I can't remember who was the latest person. I think, and it was a carpathy, right? Like, you know, he sort of like went away and then he re-emerged at Anthropic after his time in the woods.

38:17So, so we'll be, maybe that's the better measurement. It's like, we should almost put like a little marker up, you're like, okay, in one year, what is this person actually doing? Have they like rejoined another lab? And if so, like, what does that mean? I don't know, maybe it just, maybe it just means nothing, but it's sort of like, that seems to be, I like your idea, though, that does seem the loop that they all follow. They all come back eventually. Well, yeah, we're already having to keep track of like which time AGI actually started. So, yeah, we've got a couple loops to circle back on in the next year or two. I just feel like it starts every time Jensen gives a keynote and he wants to fire everybody up. He's like, today, today was the beginning of AGI. Like, I think he's announced it like three different times. And to his defense, all of his charts go up and to the right. I listen, if only, if only we had all bought in video a long time ago, we know what we probably wouldn't be podcasting. We probably would be on the beach. Yeah, but you know, that is what it is. All right. Well, listen, the most important news as we kind of ride to the end of this decade is something none of us have really actually seen other than a picture. But I wanted to get everyone's opinion on the iPhone duo.

39:20So for some reason, if you're living in Iraq, that's the new foldable iPhone. Matt Ray, we know you as the early adopter of Apple, all things Apple. I know you love it. I know you can't wait. What did you see when the new CEO of Apple, he opened it up and he flipped open the Apple duo. I'm getting one. Where are these thoughts? No. I mean, you know, I know you're trolling me, but I mean, at this point, I'm six generations behind on my iPhone. It still supported. It still works fine. Six. So what are we doing? I'm on a 12. 12. 12 many. Oh my God. It's still working. It works great. It's still supported? Wow. And impressive itself. You got that right. Okay. Go on. I interrupt you, Joe. Then moves you up. This is not the one. What's going to move me up is being out of support or the phone dies. I mean, because I've seen, I haven't seen the iPhone duo, but I've seen other foldable

40:21Android phones. And I'm like, why the hell would I want a big screen like that? It's like, I don't need a tablet. I mean, I'm already not the right person for this. I'm running the smallest phone I could. Remember, I went from like the, but when it's collapsed, I don't know. I know what's a good question. Well, I have to get the specs out. Like when it's folded, maybe it's smaller. I don't think it's maybe smaller than yours. Then your two have to go back and what? I don't know. What's that? What? No, no, no, no. It's not like the frame. You can just use it in its mini mode. And then you open it up when you want the big mode. The mini mode is intriguing, but the price is like, no. Price. Well, Aaron, let's, price you actually said in the, in the Slack, Aaron, you had a funny comment about the price. So give us your take. What's your thoughts on the price? Well, first of all, let me just say this two days ago, I replaced my mom's iPhone 10 with an iPhone error. Okay. So, yeah. So she wanted, she likes to, which by the way, I have the error.

41:24So I went with the light phone, but I'm, I cannot and have never bought a, you know, pro liner, the max liner or whatever. Like, obviously, I have the error. So I like mine. I like light. I like thin. It does everything I need to do. I'm good. I'm super curious on the foldable because I just think it's the neatest thing ever. And I would, but here's the thing like on that, it's got to be heavy. I would never carry it around. It would never be my daily driver. I thought the prices were going to be, I think the intro price was 2000. And then I went up to like over 3000 for like, to do a lot of. Did you do a few with her? Yeah. And I was, I actually thought I was going to start at like 2500 and go to like four grand. Yeah. I was like, 19, 1995 or something. I think that's the case. So my comment was, I was like, oh, that thinks cheaper than I thought it was going to do. That was my comment in this light channel today, because I actually thought that they was going to be more expensive. But I'm not, I'm not target audience either. And I guess it's, for me, it's slightly different.

42:25It's like, I travel so much and you like to take my phone with me when I'm running. And there's so many things I do. I could never have a big bulky phone. Yeah. I already, I already don't go with a pro or a max phone. There's no way I would do a do a phone. Neither of one of you have an iPad that you use regularly. No. I had a iPad pro. I want to say it was, it was one of the M chips, maybe the N2. Had it for a long time, hardly ever used it. And I actually gave that to my mom as well. So my mom's running and I think that's it. I'm going to have an iPhone Air. So yeah, she's living large in the third. Well, I'm still in a while there. Because that's the obvious question then. It's like, well, I do have an iPad. I do kind of use it around the house a little bit. But I guess, you know, if you're traveling, and I will, when I'm traveling, sometimes I'll take it because it's nice to watch movies on the plane stuff with. So like, but, you know, obviously you don't have to, you can get an iPad first. I think it's the lowest 300 bucks, even if, you know, especially if you're willing to go back a few versions, you can get one.

43:25And so that's kind of the question too. It's like, well, do I really need this all the time? But I'm really curious. I think we know all, everyone has kids, teenagers are above. So I was talking to my son and I was like, you know, just I just see the way that they use the phones. Like, I don't see them go. That whole demographic doesn't feel like they're going to go to the flip phones. So kind of cheer question, or to flip, snap flip phones. Sorry, the fold. I don't know, Aaron, kind of back to your, your kind of point there was like, you know, like, do you see like your, your children, they're more older, right? And then college age and more on. Do you, do you see them actually wanting something like this? And if not, who is this arguing market? So wanting it maybe, but here's a quick story. And my youngest in particular, lover to pieces, but she is just the world's worst electronic person. So she lost her phone in a snow storm. It got frozen to the middle of the street, run over by multiple cars. And we actually took it in and they said, it's the worst iPhone they've ever seen,

44:26damage miles. Then a couple of years ago, she had a, she had a Mac error. And again, whatever with kids, apparently she was watching TV while she was in the tub and knocked it over and her fell in the tub. And we took it back to the store and it was the most water damage they've ever seen in a laptop. You're the ever pictured by the cash register. Right. So, so like, I don't think my youngest is the target audience. I don't know about my name. I think your youngest is a target for AppleCare. I think AppleCare, I'm next insurance. I don't have it on everything. I think that's what it really is there. So, well, I don't know. I mean, I guess I will do unlike what's the, what was the head set called the Vision Pro? Unlike the Vision Pro, I've still never tried the Vision Pro. I've never had the time or I would like to, but it's more effort. I am going to make the track to the Apple store at some point too. When they have a mod and stands and check it out. Because it does seem like until you touch it.

45:28And I want to reserve my final judgment to actually see it. But I do think it is kind of funny for Apple. It's like, my thought was just sort of like, I don't know, man, the form and function of the phone may just be perfect as it is. Like, you know, whatever, a six inch device that's, you know, just solid, that's just, you know, thin. It's just like, you know, they, every year, they make it slightly different. But it's like, that's just maybe what the best it can be. Like, you know, it's like, there's not much more to improve it. So that's maybe a dilemma for Apple. If you're trying to make billions or dollars, you have to keep coming up with new devices. But definitely wasn't the Vision Pro. And no one's, you never see that in the world. So that's going to be interested to see how many of these, of the duos that we actually see in the world. Maybe that'll be the measurement of success. Brendan, what would be your use case for it? I mean, here's the thing. If I got one, the only reason I would ever use it would be to watch movies or my, you know, 100 deep YouTube watch list because my eyes are getting old enough that a, you know, phone screen is sometimes hard.

46:30But, well, you know, you hit on it. That would be fun. You should say that. I literally the only reason I could, well, you know, it's funny to say this. So because I was, yesterday I was at the eye doctor doing my inline exam, because when you get all, you have to do that. You gotta get your prescriptions updated, right? And I was talking to my son, like, I really, at times, you know, and obviously, I know, I thought it has great accessibility. But as, you know, people get much older, like your parents age and beyond, right? You know, they'll have the screen like cranked way up. Kind of to the point where like, this is like, it looks weird. So my thought process was kind of like, I could see having this just to make it, I mean, this is the ultimate old man kind of thing. So just say, just so I could have a screen that I open up and I can see everything big and it still be in like a real aspect ratio. So I thought like, that's like a legitimate use case because that's something that makes it easy to carry. And then when you actually do want to read and you need to sign something, you can make it big and see it. So I'm sure that's not a very exciting. Like Apple's not pitching that, like, look at this phone, you can use when you're getting old and you can still see the aspect ratio. Like they weren't making that pitch. That's what they're making for.

47:31You just strap it to your head and nobody could see that you're actually making that pitch. But I was like, I did think to myself, like, as I'm getting older and every year, it's like harder and harder to like see closer or maybe this is the reason I get it. Two bits to that. A, I could see them coming out with a version in the future that yeah, like the outside of it is regular and you open it up and it's like the super big font or whatever, so you need your readers or something like that. So the old person accept accessibility mode. But then two, like, I mean, they're missing a marketing opportunity if they don't bundle that thing with a consumer cellular plan on top of it as well. So duo with consumer cellular? They're ready to go. So. All right, well, you're up to date on everything. Everyone go, someone go buy the iPhone duo for the software-defined talk audience and then post in the Slack, tell us if it was good or bad. That's what I want to see. Now, we did have a few things,

48:31pieces of listener feedback. So I wanted to say I sent some stickers to Divesh and I don't even have to say this as well. It's Rittis, which is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, about 500 miles east of Madagascar. So Divesh, you are the lead software-defined talk promotion person. I think you're the, that's the first time I've ever gotten and I actually didn't know where this was. I had to look at it on a map. So happy to send him a sticker. Also send some stickers to Simon in Northern Ireland. He tells us in 1771, Benjamin Franklin traveled to Hillsboro Castle to meet Willis Hills, the Earl of Hillsboro and Britain's Secretary of State for the colonies. By the end, the two men were bitter rivals. Their tense meeting there is sometimes why the reason Hillsboro Castle is called the Burst Place of America. So one bad meeting in Ireland, you get an entire revolution in a new nation. So appreciate Simon writing in. If you would like a sticker, all you have to do is send your post will address to stickers at software-definedtalk.com. Happy sending a sticker anywhere in the world.

49:32Couple other things. Cote was looking last week for, how do I get my audible files? If you will, non-DRM, is that a thing we can say? And I can listen to them on any device. So I think Gabrielle recommended OpenAudible.org and there's a couple other things that do that as well. I think Aaron, you've done that. Not in my legal sense. You haven't done anything. No, no, no, I've opened Audible. I have an annual license to it. I've been using it for years to highly recommend it. So there you go. So if you want to listen to your Audible. If by the way, to give you an ID, I have like 300 and something audible books. So yeah, I've got, there you go. Perfect. Conferences. Got tons of conferences coming up. But the most important conference, at least this week, is we want to make sure we tell our friends, you go to see our friends at We Are Developers North America. September 23rd, 25th. It's coming up. Now's the time. Use Cout, DevPod 50, which surprisingly gives you 50% off. There could be some free tickets left. If you use it right here, if you go to the show, make sure to find other software-defined talk listeners. Make sure you have your software-defined talk.

50:34Sticker and you're wearing that and you're telling everyone. The reason you went to the conference is because you heard about it on our show. Of course, Cote is going to be speaking at many places. I'm not going to go through them all, but they're mostly in Europe. So there you go. That's your homework. Your homework is to go check that out. But in April, our friends at Scale 24, out there in Pasadena, Matt's been there. They're always a fun show. That's another one to check it out. So tons of conferences, tons of DevOps days. Check all of those out. Now, on the recommendations, Matt, we will start with you. What are your recommendations this week? Well, Brandon, I'm sure you're very happy. I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my home router to the Ubiquiti Unify Express 7. So, dropped it in, replaced my aging synology, and it's pretty great. I can see all the traffic flows. I can see all my devices. Just really just dropped in and switched out the wireless networks and everything mostly just worked. And as you'll be happy to find out,

51:35I can now see my packet loss. So, more upgrades are coming, but so far so good. You know, the more you say that, I feel like we need to get a monitoring company to sponsor you personally. Matt Ray's in the sponsor view. You're monitoring your internet connection specifically. We've had so many people come on here about monitoring, but I want someone to send Matt Ray. What is the recommendation that Matt Ray needs to be using? What software does he need to be using that supports Unify? So, you can see exactly what's going on in his network. Someone give Matt Ray a free code for that. And don't, and for God's sakes, let him not be naggious. I want some good stuff. I want some of the good stuff that all of you people have. So, I will be, I will be, like I said, more upgrades are coming, and I will be sure to share my availability times with my provider. And that's right, data dog, Grafana. This is, I mean, it's your opportunity. Get down on here. You know, you're going to be an official sponsor. One of you needs to step up, make it happen. What's your other recommendation, Matt? My other recommendation is a electronic artist called Paul. They've been around for 27 plus years.

52:38I mean, it's really just kind of a minimal, I'm sure Kote would love it. It's good. I'll be in background music. It's, I've just been listening to a lot lately as I've been, you know, grinding through some work stuff. That's my recommendation. Is go listen to Paul start with 1, 2, 3. Do you have been on like a lot of low-time music lately? You've been like, I can't listen to stuff with words while I'm working. Yeah. Nothing. No, no. I've been listening to the modern country. What's going on? We didn't get you. No, no, no. No. And light on the beats. Like it has to be kind of, oh, you have like a BPM setting. It needs to be a, but I was certain. Well, no, but, but, you know, you just kind of switch artists as you find the things that do and don't work. All right. Well, you got a good network and something to listen to while you're in the closed day. Aaron, you've got some good recommendations. What are they? Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, a bit of breaking news. I'm going to do on this podcast. I'm actually going to be at the World AI Summit in October in Amsterdam. I just found out today.

53:38So there you go. So I'm going to be speaking. I will, Aaron will give us a link. We'll put it in the show. There you go. Absolutely. So I'm going to be doing that. But recommendations, I've actually got two. The first one we mentioned, Audible. I'm obviously a huge fan. But there is a book series out there, Dungeon Crawler Carle. Pretty popular series and you know, software defined slack favorite is Murderbot. It's kind of got the humor of Murderbot. I'm not going to spoil the plot. You just need to kind of go look it up. There's just here's a book. It's up to that eight books now. Oh, wow. Okay. Nice. And I've read and listened to almost all of them. But my recommendation is specifically the Audible version. Reason why is the narrator that does it is just absolutely amazing. And actually a lot of people, the preferred way to consume these is the Audible version. So if that is appealing to you, definitely go check that one out. My second one, and this is more slightly Java, Java related, but I guess it could be

54:41Audible related. I have gotten into in-ear monitors. So you know, not just like Bluetooth headphones and all those, especially for traveling, for planes. They're basically the same things, you know, DJs would use or use on stage with bands and stuff. Really fantastic sound quality and really awesome noise cancellation, but it's all passive. Like it's basically earplugs. And there's one pair. It's 19 bucks US on Amazon. The Yin-Yo K-Bair Storm Professionals. The link will be in the show notes. For a $20 pair of in-ear monitors, the sound quality is unbelievable. And when you're traveling on planes, you can just plug in into the entertainment system. And so if you want to honest, so the bonuses. So I literally travel within your monitors now pretty much wherever I go. I've got those and then I've got a better pair as well, but honestly, the better pair, this pair sounds just as good. So recommend those.

55:43All right, fantastic. For my recommendation this week, I'm trying to prepare for the Austin Winter, which means like, what am I going to do when the power goes out? I've discovered this new place called Bass Power. Bass Power comes out to your home. They install a battery for free and they have like this, if you will, monthly charge like $9.20 a month. And what they do is they, if you will, sell the electricity back to the power company when it's high priced. But you get a whole home battery, if you will, so that when you lose power, it'll kick over and you've got some, some of the, if you'll extra battery. So I don't know how I don't have it yet. I'm going through the process. I took the pictures, I sent it off. They sent now my applications with Austin power. So if you want to try it, click on the link there, Bass Power, and on the show notes, I guess we both get $150. So I think it's going to be good. And I would love to hear for someone that actually has it. If they have it and they like it, that would be great to know. Or if they have it and it's a disaster, that would also be good for me to know before I actually get this installed. So Bass Power, tentatively recommending it.

56:44I really, if anything, I'm looking for a specific feedback on if it's good or if it's bad. What's the estimated runtime? It's up to 36 hours, depending on obviously your home load. And they also have this thing where you can actually, to go beyond that, you can, that has a generator port where you can actually plug it in and charge it up. But again, haven't like, it sounds good. All of it sounds good, but I'm a little, you know, maybe it's a little too good to be true. We shall see. We'll see what happens there. All right. Well, you've made it through an exciting episode of Software Defined Talk. We appreciate Aaron jumping in for Kote, who funny enough, Kote is not here because this internet's out. So there you have it. You know, even the Dutch have problems with internet, you know, for once the Dutch internet was the worst internet of all of us, even Matt Ray's internet was better than Kote's, which is saying something. But if you like to see all the things we talk about in this show and somethings we didn't go to Software Defined Talk, dot com slash 589 and you'll see the full show notes. Of course there you can sign up for the Slack.

57:47You can sign up for our newsletter and if you click around, you should go see Aaron and check out the Enterprise AI show. That's another one. Go check that out as well. So with that, we will talk to you next time. I don't know why it would be better, but I'm going to say yes. You like, well, I'll take the under 15 minutes.